A rumble in the distance. Big things are coming.

edited October 2015 in Community
So, I don't wanna get toooooooo excited yet, but today was a very big day. I've talked before how before this I worked on nuclear fusion. So I'm quite used to vacuum systems and everything that goes along with them. This importantly covers coating of things with other things that you can't normally coat them with. Things like titanium nitride, or diamond. I've spent the last little while rebuilding my old setup since making some of the high tech materials I need for various projects turned out to be cheaper than trying to buy them (carbon nanotubes cost 1200 for a 4cm x 4cm forest). I've been building all day and have finished the day with a functional vacuum chamber that can be switched out easily for various purposes and allow for all kind of coatings. I'm waiting on a few parts to show up to really crank it up to 11 but now I can properly start researching these materials and the benefit of it will hopefully extend to all of you. I'll be able to make high quality mirrors for lasers and various projects, hopefully the nanotubes I desperately need and i'm working on boron doped diamond for use in neural implants. I'll post some pictures and videos of ym setup later but my hands are cut, soar and bloody and frankly I can't be bothered right now. This is still just the first day but if this continues to work this well and at this pace it'll be an exciting next few months. 
«134

Comments

  • Congrats on the push! Can't wait to see what you'll be able to crank out.
  • And as promised, video: link
  • Dude your Canadian!?!?

    Anyway that's awesome it looked like you are really ready to get going. How long do you expect the growing to take when you start it up?
  • ...yes? :P what about it?

    Diamonds grow at a few micrometers per hour so the longer you leave it the thicker the coating. Now, I don't know if it'll even work on this setup. I may need to work a diffusion pump in to get a deeper vacuum but I can still do plenty with just this. If nothing else I can easily do metal evaporation once my molybdenum foil shows up to make the carrier boats. Which means custom mirrors for lasers and telescopes. I should mention, once this is done, i'm opening it up as a service to whoever needs it. So if you need a small piece coated in aluminum for example I'd be able to do it for you for cheaper than most other companies. Same with the electrodes. I'm making them so that people here can use them. But I digress. 
  • That's ok I digress more....cough....go Bruins.....cough....

    That's really cool that you will be able to do that does a diamond coating equal longer lasting or just stronger and more bio friendly?
  • incredibly long lasting and durable. Very bio friendly and I can make it conductive or insulating
  • Could you use it to make a charging port or connector to charge an implant then? If it's as strong as diamond (cause it's diamond) and conductive as hell that would be a great way to make charging in and through skin something to be "easily done" I assume?
  • i guess but I don't see the point. A charging port doesn't need to be diamond hard since it shouldn't be wet or really in contact with the body. It's conductive but only really good at a few volts. Past that it causes isssues. Still great for electrodes for neural interfaces and biosafe coatings potentially. But not a charging port. Also good at disinfecting pools and sewage treatment since using it for electrolysis rips proteins apart which is cool. Was kicking around an idea for a synthetic stomach based on diamond. "I EAT (with) DIAMONDS"
  • Neural interfaces sound like a good path to go down, but not directly on the brain - peripheral nerve interfaces would be easier to handle both in terms of the surgery (and complications) and ease of development (it's easier to read a muscle signal and stimulate a touch receptor than to work directly with the brain).

    How feasible would it be to tap the muscle signals in an arm and translate that to commands that work separately from actual full muscle movements? I'm thinking about picking up small signals that aren't strong enough to cause an arm movement but could still be trained for input to a computer.
  • I say neural, I do mean peripheral. While it could be used on the brain, im not letting some guy in a back alley crack my head open to put it in as it were. So ya plan was to go for an arm. If you're "tapping muscles" with a surgical implant rather than a surface electrode you'll be picking up a lot more than small signals. Proper surgery would let you attach to the nerves that would've gone to the hand so you get loads of info to control whatever you want.
  • I'm used to working with EEG and EMG using electrodes on the scalp or facial muscles where everything is in the microvolt range, how much stronger would it be when connecting directly to nerves inside the body?

    There's almost certainly info about this in the medical literature for invasive BCIs such as the BrainGate but I actually looked into this a few years back and found no hard specifications.
  • I'm not sure of specifics as I haven't had a chance to read into deapth, but presumably, its significantly more
  • The problem is it's not really feasible to figure it out experimentally since you need to spec the ADC chip BEFORE you build+implant your device.

    I'll do some more hunting around myself and see if I can get voltage specs.
  • edited August 2015
    So I'm filming a video on exactly how hydrothermal carbonization works and so I'm trying something new. I'm using it to make iron oxide nanospheres, that are hollow. The same thing can also be done using silica (which is important but i'll explain another time) and other metals (cobalt nickle etc.) I'm curious to see if they would make better thermite but could also be useful as a catalyst. Also, they look super weird. Like a more vibrant red than normal iron oxide, or at least they do in the paper. We'll see how it goes. Also got more things sorted for the vacuum system so it's no more than a month away from being able to do all the cool things. Just waiting on stuff from the states and china, so really it's just shipping that's slowing this down. In the meantime just gonna keep working with hyrdothermal, which I think honestly is probably one of the most important nanotech synthesis methods I've seen to date if I'm being honest, due mostly to how well and easily it lets you make complex nano structures and how green and safe the process is. (damn that's a run on sentence) Of course got other projects in the works and I'll update them as they go. Also I've almost got all 3 chambers built, just gotta drill 2 more holes and epoxy some stuff and the vacuum metalizing one will be done. Pics as soon as everything is built. 
  • Before you try making thermite with it, Allow my to warn you. It's not going to catch on fire; It's going to explode. So, if you REALLY want to play with nano-thermite, play with tiny quantities. That said, keep it (nano-iron oxide) away from your other nanometals.
  • Just gave a quick look into it. Ya I see what you meant. Thermite that can be lit with a match? that's scary. I only used 5 ml of iron solution to start so I won't have very much of the stuff and it shrinks when you remove the chewy carbon center so it'll be even less. Unfortunately, you warning me that's it dangerous, just means I'll need to film it when I make some, rather than scare me off making it XD. Which means I now need to figure out how to make aluminium nanopartivcles and we're set! Anyone who says science is boring is a tool lol
  • For the coating of things, what temperatures do components need to withstand during the coating process?
  • Depends which process. What do you want to coat your piece with?
  • Diamond or sapphire or TiN
  • edited August 2015
    Diamond isn't that hot, TiN gets toasty enough to mess up a magnet but I'm not sure how hot excatly and sapphire is the same temp as TiN. I've got a thermocouple specifically to test things like that so as soon as it's good to go i'll let you know how hot it gets in there. I know that tape on the back of items survives the process just fine and so do many plastics. Are you coating glass? or a metal or what? if it's a sensitive subject pm me

  • edited August 2015
    Sapphire sits up there with Silicon in terms of melting temp. Thousands of degrees. (I was sort of trying to manufacture synthetic sapphire for a laser at one point, but gave up when I couldn't make a 2K Fahrenheit flame.)
  • edited August 2015
    We'll see how things go and if I can coat plastic or not, it may just burn. if it does then no plastics in the sputter chamber but I can still metalize plastic with aluminum or gold or maybe copper. And although gold isn't the best coating wise, it'd be a lot better than electrolytic gold coatings 
  • Heh... Well, I'm not really certain then. In my experience, limited though it is, Oxides tend to need higher temperatures across the board.
  • Oh you don't actually start with the oxide. If you want the oxide you fill the chamber with oxygen and the oxides form on their way to the target. Same with nitrides. Not sure about carbides, maybe methane for that. Diamond is hydrogen bubbled through a hydrocarbon. You actually make most of the materials mid air as it were. Or rather you adjust teh amount of oxygen and argon and nitrogen in the chamber but ya that's the basics
  • Made some of the iron oxide nanospheres that are hollow on the inside. Made a full video showing exactly how I made them. It's just rendering and will be up by tomorrow morning. It's kind've cool, it looks just like really high quality iron oxide which most methods I've seen to make regular iron oxide look like a nasty brown and is usually impure. So it's cool that this method could be used to make nice pure iron oxide, but the particles being so strange makes it even better. Had a few mishaps while making them (things accidentally exploded a little, remarkably a ceramic dish doesn't like being quickly heated to 100 degrees) So i ended up losing a lot of powder so i'll have to redo the whole process but once I make enough i'll try making some thermite out of the stuff. Using the same process i'll try and make the silica particles soon which are basically aerogel and those will be used to house proteins and stuff on the inside of a protocell (maybe). So ya was a productive day and video will be up tomorrow
  • Can't wait to see it and thermite... sounds like your gonna have some fun.
  • Link to the new video: link
  • Could this method be used to put a bioproof coating on an RFID chip?
Sign In or Register to comment.